Vought pitches reluctant senators on $9.4B in clawbacks to NPR, PBS, foreign aid
Sen. Lindsey Graham, whose support was in question, told the White House budget director he will vote for it.
White House budget director Russ Vought pressed senators on Wednesday to clear President Donald Trump’s request to scrap $9.4 billion, amid GOP resistance to slashing funding for global health programs, public radio and PBS.
Testifying before the chamber’s appropriators, the OMB chief laid out the White House’s argument for canceling $8.3 billion in foreign assistance and $1.1 billion for public broadcasting. The request — a sliver of the nearly $7 trillion the federal government spends each year — is one small cog in Vought’s strategy to kill funding Congress already approved, as Republican lawmakers quietly decry Trump’s undercutting of their “power of the purse.”
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